End of the year epic sassafras mountain ride

It has been an annual tradition for me for the past 15 years to end the season with a truly epic ride. During my college days, that would involve a 200+ mile ride in the mountains of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. In my older and busier days now, I have shortened the ride down to about 100 miles, but still with awesome climbing in my college playground of the NC/SC/GA tristate area. This year’s ride included two major climbs — Whitewater Falls and Sassafras Mountain — with countless smaller hills in between adding up to over 11,000 feet of climbing. And at 108 miles, it was a few miles longer than the past few years as well.

Check out my power and heartrate stats below: I love that my highest heartrates are on the crazy awesome descents!!! Leading into the long descent from Sapphire down to Rosman, I saw a big truck coming up behind me on US64, so I hammered the last 200 meters or so to just stay ahead of it before the start. Then he didn’t catch me until 15 miles later just before I turned onto US178 to head into Rosman! Plus for Sassafras Mountain, there is only one section where it is safe to really let it out, but that section happens to start with a 20% ramp before settling down to a nice 10-15% downhill gradient. I maxed out at 59.4mph staying above 50mph for almost 30 seconds! It definitely felt like the fastest I’ve ever been on a bike – especially since the road is rough. The bike feels like it is going to break up underneath you.